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As you may have noticed, I love using popular characters from stories and cartoons which act as my little helpers when teaching very young learners. When little children recognise the characters they instantly enjoy anything related to them. This way, you can encourage them to do almost anything because they really believe it is the character who is asking them. That is my little cheeky trick 😉

In this post I would like to share how through the story of The Gingerbread man my little pupils learn some movement actions at the same time they have a lot of fun.

First of all, I present the action flashcards. Some times I use a box and they have to take them out and other times I hide them around the classroom and they have to find them. Once they have them all 6, we decide what the images are about and then we play some movement games. These are the flashcards I use: walk, stop, skip, run, jump and dance.

The movement game they love the most is one where I tell them the actions one by one and they have to do them, if someone doesn’t do the correct one he/she is eliminated and has to sit down. They love competitions!!! It is also great when one of the pupils acts as the teacher and you take part in the game.

Second, we read the book of The Gingerbread man. Afterwards, the pupils answer some comprehension questions such as what animals appear in the story and what actions from the ones we’ve seen the Gingerbread man does. At some other point, we also watch the video version of the story. I quite like this one:

Third, there is also this song that I adore using. I found it in a CD that belongs to a classbook called FunTime and I made the video to use it in my classes. It is simply perfect because in it the gingerbread man runs, jumps and stops, so we can add two more of the actions we presented at the beginning. Besides, the tune is super catching and easy to dance 🙂

Once we have listened to the song a few times, the pupils should be able to recognise which of the 6 actions the gingerbread man does and which ones he doesn’t. I do it this way: I show the flashcard and ask “Does the gingerbread man dance?” and they answer “Yes, he does or No, he doesn’t”. We classify in 2 different groups the 3 he does and the 3 he doesn’t do.

Fourth, If you are lucky enough to have a tablet, computer or smartboard in your class, then you could use this online memory game I created so the pupils can practise the movement actions at the same time they play. They love memory games!